Category: News

Grazed from InfoStor.  Author: Pedro Hernandez.

CloudBerry Lab, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based cloud backup specialist, wants to help SMBs maintain multiple data backups on the cloud with the release CloudBerry Backup v3.8.  Cloud backup servicesAccording to Alexey Serkov, CloudBerry Lab CTO, the new software tackles some of the thornier issues of managing backups on multi-cloud environments. While the data centers of major cloud services providers are generally robust, they can’t protect against every risk to backup data.

are gaining in popularity, particularly among SMBs. They allow smaller firms — often lacking in big IT budgets or technical know-how — to safeguard their vital files on off-site, enterprise-grade data centers. For an affordable subscription fee, business can trade juggling external hard drives and tapes, for automated backups and the ability to recover data after disaster strikes…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Melissa Busch.

Many companies that have utilized public clouds have likely moved on from the experimental, "getting acquainted" stage of their relationship and may be aiming to fully commit to each other with mass migration, according to an article from InfoWorld.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

As the relationship between companies and their clouds evolves, organizations grow choosier about the services being delivered, and certain issues start to create static between them. When high prices, substandard services or poor security become major detriments to the relationship, it may be time to start looking for a new public cloud vendor…

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

Contrary to the hype, cloud computing is not unique; in fact, this "as-a-service" concept closely resembles the provision of such common utilities as electricity, natural gas and water. As cloud computing deployments become more popular and the service terms of providers align, how do midsize IT professionals ensure that they are getting the right price combined with the best access? In other words, what is the best way to keep cloud resources flowing?

You’re Not Special

That is the take-away from a March 19 Government Executive article titled "Why Cloud Computing Is Like Water." Author Kimberly McCabe says that "successfully acquiring cloud services requires suppressing the notion that your agency’s computing resources needs are truly unique and require a customized product or service." She boils it down to a simple concept: Water is water and computing is computing, no matter the purpose or the buyer…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Mark Smith.

At Oracle’s recent cloud computing analyst summit in sunny Palm Springs, the company’s executive team insisted that it sees clear skies for its efforts in cloud computing. The summit was led vr_BTI_importance_of_cloud_computingby senior executive Thomas Kurian, who runs the entire product organization and reports directly to CEO Larry Ellison. He affirmed that Oracle intends to offer the full range of cloud computing – public, private and hybrid models – to its customers and partners.

As one of the world’s largest software suppliers Oracle has much at stake to make its database and all tools and applications available in these cloud environments, including managed cloud services. Our business technology innovation research shows this is a smart bet. Cloud computing is important or very important to 57 percent of organizations, and more than half (55%) of cloud users have been using it for more than a year. I noted in 2013 that simplifying IT and innovating in business are key to its software strategy, and Oracle’s efforts since then have executed on this outline…

Grazed from The New York Times. Author: Clair Cain Miller.

Microsoft has lost customers, including the government of Brazil. IBM is spending more than a billion dollars to build data centers overseas to reassure foreign customers that their information is safe from prying eyes in the United States government. And tech companies abroad, from Europe to South America, say they are gaining customers that are shunning United States providers, suspicious because of the revelations by Edward J. Snowden that tied these providers to the National Security Agency’s vast surveillance program.

Even as Washington grapples with the diplomatic and political fallout of Mr. Snowden’s leaks, the more urgent issue, companies and analysts say, is economic. Tech executives, including Eric E. Schmidt of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, are expected to raise the issue when they return to the White House on Friday for a meeting with President Obama…

Grazed from TechnologyInsights. Author: Terry Willis.

Today, almost everything is happening in the cloud – if you know it or not. It’s changing the business landscape. From storage to software to security, cloud services are taking over almost every aspect of technology. If you don’t embrace this new technology, you risk being left behind by forward thinking competitors. For a high level overview of cloud computing, review our infographic. It provides a snapshot of the many ways cloud computing is (or could be) incorporated into business operations.

What Is The Cloud?

The cloud is a metaphor for the internet that was born from diagrams depicting the internet as a cloud. These diagrams have been in use long before the term "cloud" evolved. Cloud computing then evolved from this metaphor. In a very simplified manner, cloud computing is a combination of hosted applications, data storage and remote server access through the internet. Many individuals and businesses use the cloud in some format, often without knowing. Social networks and email applications are two of the most common uses…

Grazed from CloudComputingIntelligence. Author: Editorial Staff.

Ever heard of data scientists? Well the Harvard Business Review named it the sexiest job of the 21st Century and it is has quickly risen to prominence in a number of industries including retail, oil and gas, telecommunications and financial services. So what has this got to do with cloud? Should we all be packing up our RESTful APIs and retraining? Not at all. Before looking at what the cloud has to offer the data scientist and IT departments that work with them, lets have a quick dash through history and give an explanation of the role.

Analysing data with computers has gone through a number of significant changes over the years, from looking at raw numbers by hand, to spreadsheets, Business Intelligence and, more recently, visualisations and complex real-time predictive analytics. One thing that has largely been consistent throughout that period has been the data and analysis taking place on-premise. For a long time this was down to technical reasons, but now that has been overcome with many vendors offering PaaS and SaaS versions of their tools and platforms, which means most of the barrier can be put down to the commercial sensitivity of data and it going outside the firewall. Will the service be reliable, safe from hackers, and adequately protected with encryption etc?…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Kevin McLaughlin.

Microsoft, by either acquiring or investing in mobile app development startup Xamarin, would help developers tap into a ton of new mobility and cloud computing opportunities, according to some partners. Xamarin’s tools make it possible to code iOS and Android apps using Microsoft’s Visual Studio and C# programming language.

In addition to letting .Net developers write code for multiple platforms, Xamarin could get iOS and Android developers on board with coding Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was famously resistant to working with rivals’ platforms, but partners think buying Xamarin would be a great way for new CEO Satya Nadella to show developers things are going to be different under his watch…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Asher Baig.

We talk about the “cloud” today just like we used to talk about the “Internet” back in 1996. Now the Internet is an integral part of our lives and we hardly even use the word—we talk about the applications and services it enables, such as web applications and services (we get more of our information from the Internet than anything else), instant messaging and Internet telephony.

Cloud is going through the similar rapid adoption. Cloud adoption is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 40 percent per year. Three years from now we won’t even talk about the “cloud”—we’ll talk about the applications and services it enables, such as Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce.com, BCDR, mobility and file sync and share…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

A survey of over 2000 respondents by Microsoft and 451 Research has shown that half of companies have deployed some form of hybrid cloud. The report, which clocks in at a mammoth 75 pages (pdf here, if you’ve got an hour or two), revealed that 989 (49%) of the 2041 execs surveyed had configured a hybrid for interoperability. Of that number:

• 60% had used an on premise private cloud alongside a hosted private cloud
• 42.1% had combined an on premise private cloud with a public cloud
• 39.6% had configured a hosted private cloud with a public cloud

The news will come as validation for Redmond, who asserted in May last year that the next two years would be the “era of the hybrid cloud.” As for cloud services used today and bought by service providers, 71% chose software as a service (SaaS), compared with hosted infrastructure services at 69%, outsourcing services at 43%, platform as a service (PaaS) at 37% and colocation services at 27%…